Our main task was to provide a thorough descriptive analysis of recent demographic trends in union formation and fertility in Bulgaria and Russia. We achieved this by using GSS data from 2004 and applying the life table method. Below we summarize our findings and provide some conjectures concerning the observed diversity and future course of demographic trends in the two countries.
Leaving the parental home takes place relatively early in life in both countries; however, the trend towards leaving the nest later is all the time more evident, particularly in Bulgaria. During the 1990s, the rate of leaving home considerably declined in Bulgaria and the mean age at leaving significantly increased. In Russia, the intensity of leaving home remains high and the proportion of those still living in the parental home at age 40 is very small (7-8 percent). A moderate increase in the mean age at leaving home is observed among Russian men, whereas the female pattern of nest leaving remains stable.
We extended the description of the process of leaving the parental home to separation from the parental family, where the new issue is the formation of an own union while remaining in the home of the parents. The extended view of separation from the parental family discussed above rarely has been addressed by the demographic literature and it needs a more deliberate consideration, not only within the context of the two countries considered in this paper.
Starting an own family in the home of the parents has been traditional and widely spread in the past in Russia and Bulgaria. However, since the early 1990s the rate of starting a first union before leaving the parental home has been dropping drastically for men and women in both countries. This observation points to the emergence of a new pattern of behavior, requiring in-depth analysis. In Bulgaria, along with this fall we observe a simultaneous increase in the risk of leaving home before forming a first union. Both newly established trends run in parallel with the growing individualization and increasing popular mobility during the transition period, modifying traditional behavior. In Russia, a relative increase in forming an own family along with leaving home is observed for men, whereas for women the reason for the decline in the rate of forming a union before leaving the parental home is much less apparent.
The trends in union formation and childbearing in Bulgaria and Russia were relatively uniform during the 1980s and in the beginning of the 1990s. They show that nearly all women ever have been married and ever have had at least one child in their life. Besides, people timed these events early in life. The two countries were among those with the lowest mean ages of first marriage and entry into parenthood in Europe.
In short, marriage and births were characterized by early timing and universality. Non- marital cohabitation was more spread in Russia and was mostly practiced in a traditional manner, as a prelude to marriage. The two countries differed in terms of divorce, though: in Russia it was twice as high.
The universality of marriage and parenthood also featured among a number of other former socialist countries. However, just within a couple of years following the onset of transition, universality came to an end and speedy postponement of entry into marriage and childbirth started in most of former socialist countries (Philipov and Dorbritz 2003). The latter trends were observed in Bulgaria as well. Postponement of first marriage has been significant and first unions have been increasingly formed as non-marital cohabitations, which no longer can be seen as a prelude to marriage. Fertility has declined, the mean age at childbearing has increased, and the level of voluntary childlessness has grown. To our estimates for the synthetic cohort of the 1999-2003 period, nearly 20 percent of women have never entered motherhood and they have stayed childless; an adjustment for tempo effect will hardly raise the figure above 90%. Thus, towards the turn of the century the demographic changes in Bulgaria are strong enough to indicate a departure from traditional behavior with respect to family formation.
The latter inference does not hold for Russia, though, as the changes have been considerably less pronounced in this country. Although an increasing number of non- marital unions seem to remain in this status for a long, a high rate of first marriage has continued until the beginning of this century. First births still are universal – almost all women ever have had a first child in Russia (more than 90 percent by age 40) in the 1999-2003 period. As far as the mean ages indicate, there too is no significant postponement of entry into motherhood.
The trends in second birth present a different picture. Second births have witnessed a decline in both countries since the beginning of the 1990s, but the fall has been much more pronounced in Russia than in Bulgaria. In addition, the birth of a second child increasingly has been delayed, and in Russia the delay has been more noticeable than in Bulgaria.
As regards family disruption, differently from Bulgaria, universality of marriages as one of the main features of the union formation pattern has for many years been accompanied by high rates of divorce in Russia. Already in the 1960s and 1970s, Russian divorce rates were close to those of Western countries and were even among the highest in this respect (see Council of Europe 2006). The explanation of this phenomenon is beyond the goals and the scope of the present paper, but it clearly calls for further research. The trend continues to date: while Bulgaria has been seeing moderately increasing divorces, in Russia a significant rise in divorces is observed in every later period under study. Correspondingly, the duration of marriage in Bulgaria
did not change considerably during the 1990s, whereas in Russia it experienced a major reduction. The reduction was predominantly due to an increase in divorce compared to the death of the partner as the other reason behind an end to marriage.
The summary of our findings presented above indicates that the societal transformation has influenced the family-related demography of the Bulgarian population considerably more so than it did so in Russia. The Bulgarian family formation pattern resembles the Central and East European one, while Russia keeps closer to the traditional pattern, a few exceptions apart, such as the drastic decline in childbearing after first childbirth. We conclude that the impact of tradition has remained more pronounced in Russia. However, in Russia we have found signs of new patterns developing that have already been observed in Bulgaria, such as a slowly emerging postponement of events. Hence, it can be expected that traditional behavior is giving way to a new one observed elsewhere in Europe.
The new trends seen in Bulgaria and Russia have been witnessed elsewhere as part of the second demographic transition (SDT). We can expect that they will continue in the two countries. The former socialist countries are lagging behind their Western European counterparts in the expression and proliferation of new family-related demographic behavior. Bulgaria is lagging in some trends, such as the spread of cohabitation and divorce, behind other former socialist countries, and our results indicate that Russia is lagging behind Bulgaria. (Note that our conclusions do not consider the tempo effect.)
How can our observations be explained? An application of explanatory methods was not the purpose of this study; however it is tempting to conjecture on some possible approaches towards the construction of an explanatory framework. The population in both countries experienced significant economic hardship during the transition period and during the 1990s in particular. At the same time, the collapse of the totalitarian regime opened the way to new modes of behavior that did not need to comply with any institutions. Hence, both economic and ideational changes were underway. Structural factors initiated the changes in family behavior – the decrease and postponement of union formation and childbearing emerged in response to the economic crisis and to uncertainty and ‘anomie’ brought about by the transitional period. These changes intensified as the living conditions improved, creating a more favourable environment for the diffusion and taking up of the liberal norms, value orientations, and lifestyles prevailing in Western countries (Koytcheva and Philipov 2008, Zahkarov 2008).
In general, the recent demographic changes in Bulgaria are similar to those observed earlier in other European countries. The country intensified its links to Western Europe when it became a member of NATO and the EU. We can assume that values preponderant in the West have become diffused in Bulgaria. What we observe in Russia is specific to this country; suffice it to mention the observation that falling
fertility and birth postponement take place for the second and following births but not for the first one. Voluntary childlessness is not rising. Thus, we can hypothesize that Russia has its own model of recent demographic change that deserves special attention.
The idea that Russia follows a relatively distinct pathway from Bulgaria as well as from the other European countries goes in line with the notion of the diffusion of the SDT in the post-communist countries as suggested by Sobotka (2008). There seem to be at least two pathways of transition. The model of the SDT progression in the post- communist countries is obviously different from the conventional description (van de Kaa 1987). Moreover, “the ‘Central-Eastern European’ model of the transition is as diverse as the post-communist societies and their cultural heritage” (Sobotka 2008:193). All countries of the region share certain general trends typical of the SDT, which allows to believe in the possibility of convergence towards the Western European countries at some point in the future. However, the individual features of the transition are determined by the country-specific cultural and structural background, shaping people’s life choices and life course trajectories.